Now Available to Pre-Order: “Zeppo, The Reluctant Marx Brother” — and More!

We awoke to exciting news this morning — Robert S. Bader has just announced his new book Zeppo: The Reluctant Marx Brother, published by Applause, will be on shelves as of October 15, and is now available to pre-order. The description is here:

Zeppo was the Marx Brother who didn’t want to go into the family business. A juvenile delinquent in his teen years, before joining his brothers on stage, Zeppo balanced two careers: auto mechanic and petty criminal. Even after getting dragged into the world of entertainment—for sixteen years, he did his familial duty as as a vaudeville, Broadway, and movie star—he finally made his escape from the Four Marx Brothers, making failed attempts to find steady work in real estate, screenwriting, and the restaurant business. It was only after Zeppo hit it big as a Hollywood talent agent, representing stars like Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray, and Lana Turner, that his fortunes took a turn. He bred racehorses, owned a manufacturing plant, became a citrus rancher, a commercial fisherman, and an inventor with several patents. He was, in short, a complex character, and his own family never quite figured him out.

Zeppo: The Reluctant Marx Brother gives a lively account of this checkered life and career. As Robert Bader recounts, Zeppo’s lifelong addiction to gambling led him into relationships with several notorious organized crime figures. He would ultimately appear before grand juries more frequently than the camera. Socially, he mixed as easily with mobsters like Mickey Cohen as he did with movie stars like Clark Gable. He was certainly the only Marx Brother who saw the corpse of a friend in a newspaper crime scene photo. Comprehensively researched with the full cooperation of Zeppo’s estate—including the first-ever interviews with his two sons—this is a remarkable look at the many lives of Zeppo Marx—even the ones he did his best to keep secret.

Preorder it here.

It occurred to me this morning (and it pains me to think that I thought of this too late for my new book The Marx Brothers Miscellany, that are new fewer than FOUR of the performing Marx Brothers whom fans wish they had met, but never got to. They are:

Funny Zeppo

Talking Harpo

German Groucho

Gummo

Actually, to varying degrees, samples of all four of these are available, but all too miniscule to satisfy. But in any case there’s only one of the five Marx Brothers who (ironically) pretty much showed all his cards: Chico.

I was fortunate (and flattered) to have the opportunity to talk about the Faux-Italian piano man in Episode 14 of the Marx Brothers Council podcast In April 2019. Five years and 52 episodes later (each ensuing episode apparently representable by a playing card), MBCP hosts Noah Diamond and Matthew Coniam plunge back into the topic, this time by way of Maxine Marx’s 1980 book Growing Up With Chico. In a kinder world our late friend Mari Lyn Henry might have been a guest on this show, as she was Maxine’s assistant for several years. But Diamond and Coniam do a sock-o job getting down to the nitty gritty of the chickiest (if not the cheekiest) Marx Brother in Episode 66. Listen to ’em here.